Coming Out in Print

Award-winning actors, iconic rock stars, champion athletes, and controversial political figures — all have shared their coming-out stories with The Advocate.

BY Jeremy Kinser

August 23 2012 5:00 AM ET

Janis IanIssue 683, June 13, 1995Following a life she described as full of abuse and doubt, the Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter, later a columnist for The Advocate, officially came out in an interview with fellow musician Melissa Etheridge.

“I was outed in The Village Voice in 1976. I went to bed for a whole day and hid under the covers. It took me a long time to figure out what to do. I had a boyfriend, and then I had a girlfriend. I really fell in love — like boom — the first time when I was 20. She was living with somebody, so I wound up in a ménage à trois. That’s not a good way to discover anything.”